My cousin drives a night-shift taxi. He’s been on the road for over a decade and thought he’d seen every weird thing possible. But that one fare last summer made him sell his car on the spot.
At exactly midnight, near Yuhuatai, a girl in a bright red dress and holding a black umbrella waved him down. Strangely enough, it hadn’t rained at all that day.
She got into the back seat, soaking wet, with water dripping onto the upholstery. She gave an address near a suburban cemetery and then stayed completely silent throughout the ride.
My cousin glanced in the rearview mirror. The girl kept her head down, her long black hair covering her face. All he could see was one hand with red nail polish, drawing endless circles on the window glass.
When they reached the destination, the girl handed him a crumpled 100-yuan bill. My cousin gave her the change. She got out, opened her black umbrella, and slowly walked into the darkness.
Relieved, my cousin was about to turn around and drive off. Out of habit, he glanced at the rearview mirror to reverse – but in the mirror, the back seat was completely empty, except for a large dark-red puddle of water that was slowly seeping into the foam cushion.
He whipped his head around to look directly – the seat was indeed still wet! Then he looked down at the 100-yuan bill in his hand – it was clearly a poorly printed, yellowish-green hell bank note, stamped with the words “Bank of Heaven and Earth.”
Terrified, my cousin floored the accelerator and sped away. The next day, he went specifically to that cemetery to ask around. The old gatekeeper flipped through the visitor log and said, “Nobody came to pay respects last night… Oh wait – but more than ten years ago, there was a car accident near here. A bride in a red dress was hit by a drunk driver on her wedding night and thrown into the river. Funnily enough, that day was also the 14th of the seventh lunar month – the Ghost Festival.”